


Where is the spring and the harvest?

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Historical, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Grief, Mourning, Sexual Content, The Wars of the Roses, graphic depictions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of battle at Bosworth Field, a rider comes, bearing the Queen's standard. The King presumes the worst, but is proven wrong.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <em>She is alive.</em></p>
<p>And so, he must win. There are no other choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Richard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/gifts), [simplyprologue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/gifts), [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts), [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts), [theMightyPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theMightyPen/gifts).



> This was _supposed_ to be a little 2-3k fic exploring Richard and Anne's relationship, had she not died before Bosworth and he'd won - born mostly of an image I had of her watching him return victorious from battle, and being very cool toward him because of their recent marital strife, and the grief over losing their son.
> 
> It spiralled. This is less than half of what I have written, and approximately an eighth of what I have planned to write. Let me know what you think!
> 
> Dedicated as it is because they are _enablers_.  
>  Title from the Lament for the Rohirrim from The Two Towers, by JRR Tolkien.

There is a rider, on the eve of battle.

He is flying the Queen’s standard, and the bottom falls out of Richard’s world - she is dead, then. Anne is gone. 

“Francis,” he says, faintly, and Francis Lovell is at his right hand without a sound. Good, honest Francis, who has been Richard’s right hand since they were boys, and Richard his. He will miss Francis. “Should I fall in battle tomorrow, my sister Elizabeth’s son, John - he is to be given my rights. He is my heir. Am I understood?”

Francis will see to it - he knows John as well as Richard does, loves Elizabeth’s family just as well as Richard does, for the time he spent with them.

John de la Pole is only ten years Richard’s junior, a fine young man with Elizabeth’s sharp nose, inherited from their father, and her bright laughter, all her own but shared with Ned. He will make a fine king, with Francis and Elizabeth at his shoulders.

_ Do you forgive me, Ned,  _ Richard wonders,  _ for showing up your lie? Do you forgive me, Ned, for depriving your children of the futures you had planned for them? _

Is losing Anne a penance for not saving George, as losing Edward had been a penance for not saving Ned’s boys? Richard can feel his soul creak under the weight of all the penance, and wonders if a broken soul can ever reach Paradise. 

“Take the messages from London,” Richard says, and turns for his tent. His shoulder is aching already, from the cold and the rain and the weight of his armour and Edward’s ghost in his arms, Anne’s grief in his heart, and he must rest it for the morning. “Bring anything of import to me. I will be within.”

His page knows better than to speak - a sensible boy, one of Thom Howard’s ever-growing brood - but his squire is his nephew, and dares to speak when words are not wanted. 

Both of them Edmunds, both of them like to die before seeing manhood. Richard wonders if Edmunds are all cursed, and thinks of their Edmund, slain with their lord father on the She-Wolf’s order. All for naught. All for nothing.

“You must be victorious on the morrow, uncle,” Edmund de la Pole says, unbuckling Richard’s pauldron, giddy as only a boy can be, before battle. “The Queen will never forgive us if we allow you to lose.”

Richard knows that living without Anne’s forgiveness is unbearable - in her illness, in her grief, she has been unable to see the lies for what they are - and so he does not blame the boys for worrying about such a thing. They are good boys, his Edmunds, and he half thinks to send them away so that they might return to their mothers. 

He still remembers his lady mother’s scream, when word reached her of his lord father and Edmund’s deaths. He would not inflict that on Elizabeth, or on Lady Howard.

His tent is luxurious, as he remembers Ned’s being in France, on other campaigns - he has never had the same taste for luxury as his brothers had, something he and Anne always shared, and feels out of place and out of sorts for the opulence. He says nothing, though, as Edmund de la Pole strips him of his armour and Edmund Howard puts it away, neat as a pin. It will all be over soon regardless, so what matter how fine his tent?

“Let me past, you fool!” he hears Francis shout outside. “I must speak with the King!”

“Bring Lord Lovell to me,” Richard says to Edmund, one of them, either of them. Anne is  _ dead.  _ What does anything else matter? Ned and Edward and now  _ Anne _ , how is he to fight a battle when-

“Dickon!” Francis cries, staggering past the boys with some scrap of a letter in his hand. “Dickon, you must read it!”

It has been years since Francis called him  _ Dickon,  _ and Richard snaps to attention at the unfamiliar address - no one has called him Dickon at all, since Ned died.

“You must read it,” Francis says again, pressing the letter into Richard’s hand with a wide, mad smile. “Come away, lads, let the King read his correspondence in private, come away-”

Richard hears no more, because the seal on the letter is Anne’s, broken by Francis’ impatient hand.

The writing on the parchment, elegant writing with more scrolls and swirls than it really needs, that is Anne’s, too. 

“She is  _ alive,” _ he gasps, and his knees hit the ground so hard he feels it in his shoulders. “Anne is-  _ my Anne _ -”

Francis comes to him, later - ten minutes, an hour, Richard doesn’t know, and he doesn’t much care, because Anne is alive! She is  _ alive,  _ and it is after midnight, so God  _ must  _ be favouring him today! He simply must!

“I must win,” he croaks, laughing and crying in Francis’ arms, so jubilant that he feels victorious already. “I must win, for I will not see her again if I don’t, and I  _ must _ see her again, Francis, I  _ must.” _

  


* * *

  


Anne had dismissed his squires and stripped him of his armour herself, the day he returned from France. She had laughed while doing it, and kissed him after every piece, every buckle and strap. 

He remembers the taste of her mouth as if he last kissed her just yesterday, but it has been months, in truth. He has not kissed his wife since before their son died, and the part of him that is still cautious, that is not convinced that God will see him to victory, regrets that so much it aches. 

But she is  _ alive. _ She yet lives, so he can win, and he can return to London, and he can kiss her until their mouths are bruised, because she is  _ alive. _

There is a battle to be fought, first. A battle to be won. He will win, though, and he  _ will  _ return to Anne, and he will remind her that it was love as much as practicality that drove him to ask for her hand.

His shoulder is still paining him, under his armour, and he has no doubt that it will be worse before the day is out. When he returns to London, when he heals his marriage as he could not his son, he will ask Anne to coax out the pains with her strong, bony fingers, and then he will take her to bed.

He will do these things, because _ she is alive. _

  


* * *

  


He does not see the Tudor boy, or his godforsaken uncle - he sees their standard, the Lancastrian arms fashioned with the Tudor, sees the red dragon, sees a man with the white rose on his breast cut down in a swathe of red that stains the whole world.

His crown is heavy on his helm, but he does not care. Let Henry fucking Tudor come to him now, and see who will stand the victor. Tudor fights for a crown, for a throne, but Richard fights for  _ Anne _ , and there is no greater prize.

Francis told him that he had taken leave of his wits, this morning, when he had made it clear that he was more looking forward to seeing Anne than to a triumphant homecoming. Richard does not care. Everything seems perfectly clear now. He must win, and set England to right, and only then will God allow him to set his marriage to rights.

His sword catches in a hinged elbow for a moment, and Francis throws himself shield-first at a would be assailant - and there, Hal Percy, and here, John de la Pole, his own bloody heir, all riding to his rescue.

His shoulder is so tired. His heart is so tired. Edward will never learn to swing a sword as John does, to ride a tilt as Francis does, to loose an arrow as Hal does.

He will never grow to love a wife, as Richard does.

“I am coming home, Anne,” he says, uncaring if the others hear him and think him mad. “I am coming, sweetheart.”

He frees his sword, and once loose it is loosed, and all the world seems red, save the white roses his companions wear.

  


* * *

  


The pain, when it comes, is whiter than any rose, and he vomits from it.

Undignified, perhaps, but better than dying.


	2. Anne

Anne remains where she is, by the window overlooking the courtyard, and draws her heavy shawl tighter around herself. By rights, she ought to be abed - the doctors will certainly insist upon it, when they find her - but she had to know. 

She must see him, just for a moment, to be sure that he truly does live. Even if she half feels as though she hates him now, she cannot bear the thought of his dying before her, so she must wait, and see him ride through the gates, and then her heart will be eased.

There is a crown on his lovely dark head, heavy and golden, and it suits him better than it would ever have suited all-forsaken George.

It clangs, undignified, when it hits the cobbles. Richard, in his heavy armours, falls almost soundless into Lovell and Percy’s waiting arms, and Anne turns away from the panic.

He has made it home - if he dies here, the succession will pass smoothly to his nephew, who is not Anne’s nephew, and she will pass into obscurity. All the better - there, she will be free to mourn, and might find some balm for the fury that stirs her soul into constant storms.

 

* * *

Her breath still comes uneven, uneasy, but it comes and there is no more blood in her handkerchief. For that, she is as grateful as she can be, because she had thought that in dying she might join Edward. 

She cannot dance, as the younger women do - as if she is an ancient! - but she sits, and watches, and envies Elizabeth Rivers more than she ever has any woman. Elizabeth Rivers, they say, has all that ought to be Anne’s - the respect of the court, a bright future, the King’s love and desire. 

Does she believe that Richard would bed his niece? Should she? Like as not she shouldn’t, but she does, sometimes, because why should he not? Thirteen years they’ve been wed, and not a moment she’s doubted him - but he has only been a king for such a small part of those thirteen years, and kings are not normal men. 

And Elizabeth is beautiful. Anne has never been beautiful, and perhaps it was foolish of her to think that Richard might love her even when the glow of youth left her face - it is long gone, now, stripped from her by grief and loss and sickness, and surely he will not want any part of her. 

But she knows him, too, knows him better than anyone in all the world. His love for his brother would never allow him to bed his niece, even if he was so inclined - and were it not for the distance between them, even since before Edward’s death, she would not believe him to have any such inclination. 

But that distance has been there. He has not bedded her in so long that she seems to have forgotten the taste of his mouth, the weight of his hands, the warmth of his love.

 

* * *

She is still unwell enough that time passes oddly for her, in fits and bursts and startlement, and so it is that she is startled, but not surprised, to blink and find Francis Lovell kneeling before her.

He is haggard, Viscount Lovell, as if he has neither bathed nor shaved for days now, with shadows like the night under his bright-burning blue eyes. Francis has always been day to Richard’s night, fair and golden where Richard is dark and moonlight, and Anne smiles to see him, even in such a state of disarray.

“We have sent you note after note, Your Grace,” he says, and his voice is strained, pleading. “I beg you, my lady - come to him. I  _ beg _ it.”

“He will send for me if he wishes for me,” Anne says, her smile falling away, because of  _ course _ Richard has sent Francis to do this. “If he has need of me-”

“Dickon is  _ dying _ , Annie,” Francis hisses, too close to her to be proper and calling her by her  _ name _ \- by a name no one has called her since Isabel last did. “He has called for you every damned minute since the fever took him - please, Annie, for the friendship between us, for the love I know you to bear for him, I beseech you. Go to him. He needs you. He needs you more even than he usually does.”

“His Grace has no need of me-”

“His Grace was weeping when I left him,” Francis says, visibly despairing. “He is in the throes of delirium, Your Grace, mad with fever, and he weeps constantly that he has failed as your husband. He cries out for you, and for your son. But mostly it is for you.  _ Please.” _

Richard has hardly breathed Edward’s name since they lost him, and her heart stops dead in her chest to think of him lamenting their boy’s loss even in madness.

She rises, slowly and carefully, and gathers her shawl close. Francis offers her his arm, but she waves him away - her ladies are all gathered close enough to hear, but looking away, looking busy.

“I will return for dinner,” she says, hating how frail her voice is yet. “Nothing with beef, please.”

The walk from her chambers to Richard’s is short, but she has not made it in such a while that it feels long as the Thames.

A cry comes from behind his door, and she stumbles. 

Her heart has started up again, racing now to hear his pain, and she hates herself for being so weak as to be moved without even looking upon him.

When she does look upon him - when Francis opens the door to permit her entry - she almost chokes on a sob, and is moved to tears and pain immediately.

His shoulder - his poor, crooked shoulder, of which he was always so conscious, so wary, the same shoulder she has spent hours and hours soothing with careful hands over their years together - is hidden in a mass of bloody, puss-stained bandages, fetid and stinking. The windows are all shuttered, and the room smells like a sewer.

“Open the windows,” she says. “Open them wide, immediately!”

Some doctor moves toward her with outstretched hands, murmuring admonitions and  _ Your Graces _ , and she slaps him away, moving to the bed.

She will be exhausted in an hour, like this, but she must act. How  _ dare  _ he think to die before her! How  _ dare _ he! 

“You stupid, wilful  _ fool,” _ she grits out, cutting through the bandages with the knife he always keeps tucked behind his Holy Bible on the low table by the bed. “How are you to rule if you  _ die?” _

The stench is worse when she finally splits the bandages, and she very nearly recoils from it herself.

“Send for the barber-surgeons,” she calls over her shoulder, voice weak but firm, and she is gratified to hear the door slam open and slam shut in quick order. “Francis, hot water, and you, little Howard, as much clean linen as can be found, good boy.”

They spring to it, and as little Edmund Howard lays a pile of linen as big as he is himself at Anne’s side, Richard’s eyes open.

They are glossy, star-struck, and a thousand miles distant. They still catch on her face, though, and Anne half wonders if he thinks her some terrible demon sent to haunt him, with how gaunt and haggard she has become.

“My lady,” he breathes, and he tries to lift his ruined arm to touch her face. He has always liked touching her face, thumb to her chin as he kisses her hello and fingers curling around her jaw as he kisses her goodbye. She has missed his gently hungry hands more than any other part of him save his heart, this past while.

“What a mess you’ve made of yourself, Richard,” she says sternly, as she used when he’d fall from his horse, or out of a tree while playing with Edward, at home at Middleham. His shoulder could be righted with firm hands and warm oil, then, but this is beyond Anne’s meagre skill as a healer. “Whatever am I to do with you?”

“Withhold my privileges as punishment,” he says, and she jumps at the hoarse rasp of his voice - she loves his voice, has always loved his voice, and it scares her to hear it so changed.

She blushes, too, because she has always teased that she will withhold his privileges as punishment, and it has always been a challenge for him to seduce her as repayment for worrying her when he is hurt. He must be truly delirious, if he is saying such a thing before company. 

What if Francis is right? What if he  _ is _ dying?

“Your privileges are being withheld whether or which,” she tells him, dunking some of the linens into the steaming bowl Francis presents from nowhere. The water scalds, just a little, and she wrings out the cloth only very slightly before setting it to the mass of crushed flesh and bone where Richard’s shoulder was, so recently. 

He howls, and little Howard sits firm on his King’s good arm without even being asked, when Richard begins to flail. Anne ignores him, ignores his pleading and begging because if she listens she will be brought back to his demanding that Edward live, and she cannot bear that. Francis stuffs spare linen into Richard’s mouth before moving to hold his legs, and Anne is grateful for it.

She is aware that the doctors are somewhere by the fire, but she ignores them. It is more important that she clean Richard’s wounds fully, hopefully removing any taint in his blood before it can spread.

“Your Grace, is there anything we can do to help?”

The Rivers girls are in the doorway, faces pale and jaws set, and they look more their father than their mother, in those shadows. Anne wishes it were otherwise, that they had more of their mother’s witchery in their look, because she would give anything for Elizabeth Woodville and her maybe-craft, if it would save Richard.

“St. John’s wort,” Anne says. “Fetch that and allheal from the kitchens, and put it in boiling water - bring it to me then. As hot as they will give you, and as fresh of herbs. Go now - go!”

Both girls spin, although the elder Mistress Rivers dares to glance back over her shoulder with those innocent eyes of hers, and Anne wants to scream. 

“Groundsel, too!” Francis shouts after the girls, and Anne is grateful to him. All her strength is needed to keep bathing Richard’s shoulder, which is oozing rather than bleeding, and stinking more than anything. How have the doctors allowed it to come to this state? How have Francis and Hal and John and the rest of them?

“Your Grace, if we may,” some fool doctor tries, but Anne holds up a hand to forestall him.

“The barber-surgeons have been sent for,” she says. “You are not wanted here, Doctor, not when you have allowed your King’s health to come to such a point.”

It has been… Four days? Five? Since Richard’s return. Had she been aware of just how ill he is, she would have come to him sooner, and dismissed the doctors.

Elizabeth Rivers probably knew - it warms Anne a little, to think of that abominable girl hearing Richard cry out not for her but for Anne, for Edward. 

 

* * *

Richard screams, when she pours the great earthen bowl of allheal and scalding water over his shoulder, with Francis’ help. She sobs to cause him pain, and because her arms shake so badly under the weight of the bowl that she would likely have killed her husband without Francis’ help. 

Cecily Rivers catches her when she stumbles back, and guides her to a chair that someone - Edmund Howard, she sees - has pushed to the bedside, just as the barber-surgeons make their entrance. There are two of them, one stout and the other slim, practical looking men with a leather roll of tools apiece and clean, starched aprons.

Anne doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it was not this. They bow neatly, perfunctorily, and address her with deferring  _ Your Graces _ when they need to address her at all.

But mostly, they attend to Richard. 

First, they set a strip of leather between his teeth, and tie it behind his head - it muffles what sounds of discomfort he makes, and will stop him biting through his tongue, they tell her when she asks. 

Then, they tear away the bandages that have been laid over the wound, murmuring between themselves as they poke and prod at the wound, and direct the boys and Francis and Hal and John, appeared from somewhere, to hold Richard down. Anne moves to help, but the stout one lays a broad, gentle hand on her arm.

“Please, Your Grace,” he says, “he’ll not thank us for saving him if we see you dead in the meantime.”

She does feel a little unwell, but she will see him through this. He saw her through her pains, after all, sat as close as the midwives would allow - just outside her open door, so he could call encouragement - when she birthed Edward and lost their girl, their Cissy.

Have they ever had anything they did not lose? First Cissy, then the peace of Middleham, then Edward, then one another. What have they done to earn this pain, to be deserving of such punishment from God?

Richard screams around his gag, and arches and twists - the boys and the men are holding him down, blocking her view, but he screams her  _ name _ and Anne pushes past John de la Pole to sit on the spare pillow, moves so she can cradle Richard’s head in her lap, and strokes his lovely hair.

“I am here,” she promises him. “Don’t you  _ dare _ die before me.”


	3. Richard

Richard awakes alone, in darkness, and thinks  _ this must be Purgatory, for Hell would not be so quiet. _

He hears the fire crackling in the hearth, though, and turns his head - on aching neck, God have mercy - to look, to see the outline of his high-backed armchair there before the flames, and Anne’s thin hand hanging over the arm.

Anne. Oh,  _ Anne _ .

He tries to call to her, but there is only a rasp left of his voice - he remembers only slightly, what came between the battlefield and here, and presumes that he must yet be King, if he is in his bedchamber and Anne is nearby. 

His left arm is… Hardly there, save for the deep, aching pain in his shoulder and neck, and he is scared for a moment. He reaches over with his right arm, to find his left, and is relieved that it is still there, even if he cannot yet feel it. That will come in time, he is sure of it.

He tries again to call for Anne, but still cannot. Good enough - if she cannot come to him, then he will go to her.

The pain burns white-hot again, when he hits the floor, and Anne is with him in a moment - but then she is coughing, a terrible, hacking sound, that seems to shake her whole body. And how frail she is! How delicate!

When they are themselves again, his senses regained and her breathing steadied, he looks at her properly, in the firelight, and is horrified by how unwell she looks.

But at least she is  _ alive. _

“Now I shall have to find someone to put you back in bed,” she says, “for I do not have the strength to do it, and neither do you.” 

She stumbles to her feet, not even knocking the dust from her skirts, and throws the door half-open to lean against the frame. He can hear someone replying to whatever it is she’s saying, and then Francis and Hal are laying him back in bed, and he is not sure how he got there.

“What a great bloody fool you are, Richard of Gloucester,” Anne says, sitting by his side and setting a cloth to his lips - a cloth soaked in honey-water, the sweetest thing he has ever tasted. “What possessed you to get out of bed, you  _ idiot?” _

Francis and Hal are behind her, snickering, and he wants to shoo them away - this is his bedchamber, and Anne is here, so there should be no one else at all.

“The fever has probably eaten away at your brain as well as your strength,” Anne grumbles, and Francis devolves into outright laughter, damn him. “Why in God’s name did you want to get up?”

More honeywater, and he can speak.

“You,” he says, “are  _ alive. _ ”

 

* * *

It is another four days before he is strong enough to sit out, and even then, it is only in his solar, in his high-backed chair with a heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a heavier blanket tucked around his legs.

Anne, shaking with tiredness and thin-lipped with annoyance, tucks them around him herself, and sets his hair someway to rights before stepping back.

“You’ll do, I suppose,” she says, and they are the first words she has spoken to him not in anger since he woke. “Do not faint, or we shall never convince the people that you are fit to rule.”

John de la Pole has been ruling in his absence, he’s told, with Francis and Hal and Anne to help him, and he wonders if Anne would not rather that John were ruling in truth. She has not looked him in the eye all over these last days, and it is killing him, because all he wants is the strength to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.

But she will not even look at him, so doubtless she does not wish to be kissed.

There are petitions to be heard, honours to be granted, but Richard has not the strength to sit even half a day - and Anne is worse even than he is.

She is the one who faints, and he pulls open the stitched-together ruin of his shoulder trying to catch her.

 

* * *

“She is not allowed to die,” he tells the physicians, and God forgive him but he will hang every one of them if she dies now. He has come home to her, survived the Welsh boy, and he cannot permit her to die  _ now. _ Not without seeing her smile one last time. Surely God will at least give him that?

“Your Grace ought to be abed,” they tell him, but how can he rest when Anne is so ill? 

Francis is the one to come up with a solution - or at least, so Richard thinks, until his sisters arrive in Anne’s bedchamber without so much as knocking on the door.

“Come now, Dickon,” Annie says, pressing a kiss to his hair, “you’ve far too much to be doing to hover over the lady so - give her space to breathe, little brother, and see to all your correspondence.”

Bess is holding the door, and Annie shepherds him out to Anne’s solar, away from Anne herself, and his knees nearly give out with terror that she will die while his back is turned.

“Come now, little brother,” Bess says, as she and Annie settle him down to sit, as they coax him to eat and drink. “What use are you to her if you cannot stand on your own, hmm? Do you think she would want you to neglect the realm in her favour?”

“Look at all these letters, Dickon,” Annie scolds him, kissing his hair again. “How have you let them pile up so high? You were always so diligent as a boy.”

Annie was already well married when Richard was a boy, and he spent much of his boyhood at Middleham besides, when he was not abroad in the Low Countries, but there are an awful lot of letters, so terribly many, so they set him up with a desk and a comfortable chair in Anne’s solar, and they position him so that he can see through the door, to where she is small and pale against her too-large pillows.

She loves them like that, huge and soft, and he has never been able to sleep on them at all - he has always spent his nights in her bed with his head on her chest, or her belly, or between her breasts - just she she finds his pillows too hard and thin. Right now, he would give away every comfort in the world, just to have her well again. Any price is worth paying, to save her from this darkness that is dragging her away from him.

 

* * *

He has set out his new privy council and answered all the most urgent correspondence when she wakes up.

It is slow, in the late evening, and she coughs herself upright.

He goes to her without thinking, letters forgotten, pain forgotten, as he staggers from one room to the other, as he collapses to his knees at her bedside.

She looks down at him, and smiles. Even with her hair sticking to her sweaty neck and her cheeks and eyes hollow with sickness and grief, she is radiant, and his heart chokes him with love for her.

“I think,” she says, when the coughing has fully subsided, “that we ought to speak properly of all that has come between us, these past months. I do not intend on going to my grave without my husband’s love.”

“You will never lose that,” he says, pushing himself up with only his right hand to settle beside her on the bed. He has not been so close to her for anything save practicality in months and months, and wishes either one of them was well enough for him to kiss her. “My heart is wholly in your keeping, my lady - surely you know that?”

There were those foolish rumours, nonsense about him bedding Ned’s daughter, but they truly were  _ nonsense _ \- surely she did not believe that he loved another?

Even if she had so little faith in him as to think that he would bed his niece - surely she could never believe that his love belonged to any but her?

“I knew it, once,” she says, leaning forward just enough so that her shining brow is against his good shoulder, hot through his shirt, “but I have had cause to doubt of late, my lord.”

 

* * *

He holds court for the first time since victory at Bosworth seven weeks to the day after the battle, and can only manage the morning session before he has to break. 

Usually, he would dine with guests - ambassadors, perhaps, or unsteady Lancastrians who can be turned rather than broken - but he has not the patience to sit with anyone. He is sore and tired and out of sorts, and wishes only for solitude.

Anne is waiting for him, wearing a new gown of dark green satin that makes her look paler, but suits her all the same.

“This is new,” he says, running the backs of his fingers down her arm - and drawing a flush to her bone-pale face, which is a relief. He has not seen her with any colour at all, since she was last ill, and any sign that she is returning to full health is more welcome than anything in the world. “It is lovely.”

“It is expensive,” she corrects him, smiling very slightly. “But we are victorious monarchs, and ought to look the part - I have ordered new clothes for you, to be fitted as soon as you are well enough to stand for the fittings.”

He sits, and takes her hand, and kisses her wedding ring. Her finger is shiny underneath it, worn smooth, and he likes that, that she is marked as his even when not wearing his ring.

“I would have new jewels commissioned for you,” he says, as food is brought to them. “Pearls, and sapphires, and perhaps emeralds, to match your new dress.”

“A crown, too, Dickon,” Bess says, sweeping toward the table with John at her heels, and Richard could spit with annoyance - he thought that perhaps, he might have time today to speak with Anne as she so desires, but of course not. Bess and Annie have been invaluable since their arrival, keeping court when neither he nor Anne is well enough to do so, but he still wishes they’d remember that he is their King, not just their youngest brother, not just the baby of the family, and leave him alone with his wife for more than half an hour at a time.

“I have a crown,” Anne says, squeezing his hand for a moment before withdrawing - more than she has given him in longer than he likes, but he is beginning to understand just why she has been so distant from him. 

Neglect - he has neglected her. He wishes it were otherwise, but it is true, and now that she has said it, he cannot but see neglect in his every action since they were crowned.

“I have no need of another,” she says, and he wonders at that - she does not always wear her crown, even when they are holding court, and perhaps if he had one made that better suited her, she would wear it more often. Something dainty, elegant and light, in silver and gold with those pearls and sapphires he mentioned earlier, and a dark blue gown to go with it, and pearls for her neck as well-

“When you are quite finished daydreaming, Dickon,” Bess chides him, teasing, “we should all like to eat now.”

He is thirty-three, Bess forty-one, but it is as if he is a child of seven and she a girl of fifteen again, bickering at table because she wants so desperately to please their lady mother and he simply wants to eat. He has missed his sisters more than he would like to admit, because if he admits to missing Bess and Annie then he must admit to not missing Meg, who was always much more George’s sister than she was his.

“Eat away,” he says, waving them on, and turning once more to regard Anne. She has gained a little of the weight she lost, her collarbones not as painfully sharp under her thin skin, her wrists not as breakable, and he is glad of it - he likes it best when she is carrying a little weight, because she is so small of frame that he has always fretted over her catching chills and colds. “I have little appetite.”

Food appears on his plate regardless, Anne and Bess conspiring to fatten him up as big as Ned was before he died, so he eats it, to please them.

Anne comes to court with him, after the meal and a stop at the chapel, and he feels twice as strong just for having her beside him. His shoulder still aches, his arm still feels strange and numb in its sling, and he is still exhausted, but it all seems to matter less when she is present, when there are people coming forward to congratulate her on her recovery.

 

* * *

“You never spoke of him, after he died,” she says while they are playing cards by the fire that night. “Not once. Not to me.”

Edward. Who else could it be, but their boy?

“It hurt you so much to think of him,” he says, “and I was a coward - it hurt me, too, and I could not bear it. I never spoke of him to anyone, save my father’s ghost.”

He had prayed and prayed, after Edward was taken from them, that his grandfathers would care for him in Heaven - two Richards, to care for a grandson neither of them could have predicted in their lifetimes.  _ Keep him safe, see him happy, guard him and guide him where we no longer can. _

He had prayed to Richard Neville for Anne’s sake, too, begging her father to find some happiness for her - he himself had deprived Anne of so much happiness, after all, in failing to keep Edward with them, in not finding enough trustworthy men that he had time for her as Ned always had for his Elizabeth - and had thought that Warwick had chosen to ignore his prayers out of spite when misfortune and misery piled heavier and heavier on Anne’s slight shoulders.

“I wanted to speak of him,” she says, laying down the Queen of Diamonds, painted to look like Elizabeth Woodville. “I want to still, to remember him. He was my only boy, Richard. My only child to survive into this world. Of  _ course _ I want to speak of him, even if it pains me.”

The Queen of Hearts, laid down over Anne’s diamonds, is painted in her image, which had made her blush. He cannot remember now who made them a gift of these cards, but it had been before they came to the crown, and meant in malice - Richard is not the King of Hearts, after all, Ned not the King of Diamonds, all of them mismatched and made mock. They use them all the same, and used laugh about it.

Now is not for laughter.

“Then speak of him,” Richard says, throwing aside his cards to take both her hands in his one useful one. “Speak of him without pause, if that is what you wish - I will listen. He was mine too, Anne. My only child with you who saw this world.”

“You have others-”

“Not with  _ you,” _ he reminds her, wishing she could understand. He loves Kitty and Johnny, but they are not Anne’s - he did not love their mother, and that makes it different.  _ I will be a true husband, because I love you _ , he told her so long ago, and that has not changed. Nothing could change it, and nothing ever will. 

“He had just outgrown his new breeches,” she says. “I couldn’t have them made quick enough to keep up with him - I always thought he would be small, like us, but those last few months made it seem as though he was taking after your brother, or my father.”

“He had Ned’s look, a little,” Richard agrees, leaning over the table to be closer to her. “That nose-”

“And the chin,” Anne says eagerly, eyes shining. “But your colouring, the dark hair and eyes.”

“Mostly I thought he had  _ your _ look, I admit,” Richard says, feeling almost sheepish. “But that may have been wishful thinking - I wanted him to have all of your good.”

“He was blessed to have you as his father,” Anne says, that ferocity she keeps dammed up sneaking forth, just slightly. “You loved him better than any man ever loved a son, Richard. I know that, at least.”

“You were always his favourite, regardless of how well I loved him,” Richard says, just to see her blush. “I cannot say that I blame him - it is a heady thing, to have your love. I am glad he never ran the risk of losing it.”

She blinks at him, slow and hard, and then frowns.

“You are a very clever man,” she tells him. “Far too clever to be so  _ stupid. _ ”

“Stupid? Anne, I-”

“If I did not love you so,” she says, pushing away from the table and him, “then it would not hurt me so deeply to know that your love is not so wholly mine as it once was.”

She leaves without so much as a farewell, and he sits where he is until his groom comes to ready him for bed. What does she mean by that?  _ Not so wholly mine as it once was. _

Surely she knows him better than to believe the rumours.  _ Surely _ she does.

 

* * *

“I have never bedded Elizabeth Rivers,” he says, pushing into Anne’s solar the next morning, ignoring the scattering of the ladies between him and his wife. “I have never  _ wished  _ to bed Elizabeth Rivers. I have never wanted any part of her, because I have had  _ you.” _

He falls to his knees before her, breathless and mortified by this show of foolishness - he always abhorred Ned’s public displays, but he cannot think how else to convince Anne. She must know. She  _ must _ believe him.

Her hand is gentle in his hair, careful when she trails it down his jaw to cup his chin and draw his face up.

“Your denials will be the talk of court by noon,” she tells him, “so we had best pair them with my acceptance, hadn’t we?”

Her lips are warm and a little dry, and her scent is sweeter than he remembers it being before. 

She draws away before he can so much as lift his hand.

“Now, away with you, husband,” she says, smiling indulgently in a way that is alien to all he knows of her - it makes him think of her sister, of the way Isabel used smile when George was being wayward. “You have a country to rule over.”

He gets to his feet unaided, bows over her hand for far longer than he needs to, and leaves. He is wearing one of the new doublets she had made for him, with his left arm in a sling under the heavy velvet and the loose sleeve pinned up neatly. It is the deep blue Anne has always favoured on him, the same blue she used favour for Edward, and he feels as though that is a sign of affection, even if all other signs are absent.

How have they come to this pass, where even a kiss between them is a political act, divorced from the love that has been between them all these years?

 

* * *

Margaret Beaufort is brought before him, at long last, the week before Advent begins.

She has confessed to her part in his nephews’ murders, it seems.

Elizabeth and Cecily Rivers are in the crowd, clutching one another and red-eyed, but Anne is at his side, her hand warm and firm on his knee because his hand is still hidden away in his sling. All he wants to do is strike the Beaufort bitch down where she kneels, for all the pain she has caused to him and his family (another Ned and Dickon, even closer than he and Ned were, gone because of this madwoman’s ambition - and Richard’s own). 

Afterwards… After he has sentenced her to death, after he has offered his condolences to his brother’s daughters and written to his brother’s false wife in sorrow and shame, after he has accepted the condolences of the court on his nephews’ passing…

After it all, he lies face-down in his bed, reluctant to show his grief, his fury, even in the privacy of his own bedchamber. But then, the mattress dips beside him, and Anne’s hand is in his hair, and he is safe. He is loved.

And so he cries.


	4. Anne

Richard presents her with a diadem of exceeding beauty on Christmas morning, before they leave for mass.

Things between them have been a little easier since Margaret Beaufort’s sentencing - Anne feels a weight gone from her soul, at this absolute confirmation that no offhand comment of hers led to the boys’ deaths - but they are still not as they were, and Anne doubts that they ever will be. 

She wishes it were otherwise. God be good but she wishes it were otherwise. She misses him as her husband with an ache so fierce it is blinding, sometimes, white-hot pain burning her right to the centre, but she still feels that he is not the man she married.

His arm is free of that sling, and he seems much more himself now. She had a new doublet and breeches made for him, fine claret-red velvet and supple black leather, to match his long boots, and sewed him a half a dozen new shirts, too, with the Spanish style blackwork he so likes on the collars and cuffs. 

It seems like nothing, compared with the diadem. She had expected jewels, but sees no sign of his sisters’ hands in this, only his own.

“I thought it would suit you better than any of the others,” he says, watching as her ladies - no Rivers girls, not for Christmas - arrange her hair to hold the dainty crown. “Delicate and lovely, as you are.”

Her younger ladies swoon a little when he speaks so, but Anne knows him well enough to know that such words are not empty romance, and that they are not for sharing. He means them, when he says them to her. Flattery does not come easily to him, but he has always had beautiful compliments for her, and hands them to her readily at every chance. 

“Hush now,” she warns him, with a smile that is not forced at all. “We are bound for the chapel soon - restrain yourself, my lord.”

Their walk to the chapel is slow, the pace easy - they are both prone to fits of weakness still, even if he is recovering with a heartening rapidity and she has not coughed in two weeks or more - and she relishes leaning on his arm, the warmth seeping through his half-cape and hers and into her bones. He is always so warm, and always willing to share that warmth with her.

The mass is a blur, the sermon something joyous and celebratory, but Anne hardly notices it.

Her diadem draws a dozen compliments, but her true gift from Richard came the night before, whether he knows it or not. 

He had spoken for hours and hours, of Edward and of her father and of Isabel and George, but mostly of Edward, and then he had held her against his chest while she cried, his heart hammering under her ear and his hands firm and careful against her back, cradling her head and petting her hair.

She kissed him, properly kissed him, before she left for bed, and he had watched her leave with an open mouth and swollen lips. 

She doesn’t know how she ever thought to have forgotten the taste of him.

 

* * *

All Richard’s nephews and nieces are assembled on the night of the Epiphany, save for the Burgundian cohort, but including  _ Anne’s  _ nephew and niece - George and Izzie’s children, Margaret and Teddy, who are so like their parents but without George’s hunger for power and Izzie’s hunger for love. Margaret is Anne’s special favourite, such a sweet girl with such a kind heart, and she hopes that Richard will not seek to use Maggie for a political marriage.

It is desperately painful to have all their nephews and nieces gathered around them, when there ought to be one more among their number - or three more, their Edward and Elizabeth Woodville’s boys. It is good, though, to have the family all together and united, because there have been whispers here and there of trouble, and Richard is not yet well enough to lead an army, if indeed he will ever be well enough to do so again.

Anne still excuses herself early.

Richard still follows her.

His mouth burns her, when he cradles her face in his hands and licks into her like she is something holy, something sacred. His hair is thick and soft and heavy between her trembling fingers, and he drops his left arm around her waist, drawing her close and saving himself the strain in one swoop.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs, mouth behind her ear and sucking soft against her skin. “I’ve missed you so much.”

She could cry, at the tenderness he is showing her, but doesn’t because that will only worry him. Instead, she takes one hand from his hair and sets to work on his fine new doublet, this one night-sky blue, easing it open while he is distracted by pinning her against the bed pillar and kissing her neck and unwinding her hair. 

“Let me,” she whispers, when he stiffens under her hands - she only wants him bare, doublet and shirt gone, but worries that it may be difficult for him to undress himself. “Let me help, love.”

He sighs, and softens, and lets her help him. The scarring is raw and red, worse than she thought it would be, but she kisses it very carefully all the same, and he softens further.

He looks surprised when she pushes him down against his solid mattress, too hard for her tastes, and she rolls her eyes. As if he would be able to hold himself over her, with that shoulder!

“You needn’t,” he says, as if she does not know him so well that she could make him come in just a moment, when he is like this, “if you do not wish it.”

She leans down to kiss him in response to that foolishness, and while she is kissing him she reaches around to unlace herself. 

He tugs her sleeves by the cuffs, helps her free herself of her lovely gown, and laughs when she gathers the skirts and heaves the whole lot over her head, so she can stay kneeling over him, so she can stay  _ close. _

“I love you,” he says, and she believes him. 

His hands are warm in hers as she rides him, his pleasure sudden and hers easy, and afterwards, she lies atop him, head on his right shoulder and hand on his left.

“I have  _ missed _ you,” he says, kissing her brow, and then there is only quiet, because they have quite exhausted themselves.

In the morning, they will talk. In the morning, they will fight, Anne knows, because she needed this, but it cannot be so regular as it was before. In the morning, the world will creep back in, but for now, there is only the unquenchable warmth of Richard’s skin against hers, his arm heavy around her waist and his thigh firm between hers, and quiet.

  
  


* * *

“I don’t understand,” he says, hunched over himself and low-voiced. Anne has tugged his bedrobe around herself, and sent for clothes to be brought - there are so many guests that she must be up early, because she has so much to do. “If you do not wish to- to resume our marriage, why come to my bed?”

“Our marriage has never ended, that it must be resumed,” she tells him, sitting by his feet and wondering how they have come to this pass, that every exchange is loaded, is weighted, is  _ political. _ “It has simply shifted away from what we knew. We must learn what it is now-”

“I don’t want what it is now,” he says, lifting his head, and he has tears in his eyes.

“Oh, Richard,” she sighs, letting him draw her into his lap. “Richard, I-”

“I miss you so much I can hardly think for it,” he says, face tucked against the gaping neck of her robe, against her breasts. “I miss you every moment of the day, and twice as badly at night, when I am alone in my bed and you are alone in yours. I miss having you walk with me in the gardens, or come riding with me, or-”

“And you think I do not miss you?” she asks. “You think that I do not lie awake at night for wanting you beside me? Of course I do! How could I  _ not? _ ”

“You do not seem to!” he snaps, lifting his head again to look her in the eye, and oh, God, but it hurts to meet his gaze - she has avoided doing so for so long that it is truly painful, because he has never been able to hide anything from her when they are eye to eye and she can see all the hurt and rage and loss and loneliness she is drowning in mirrored there, in the darkness.

“I do,” she says, “I do, Richard, I  _ do,  _ I swear it-”

They fight, and they cry, and then they talk.

She kisses him before she leaves to dress in her own rooms, and returns directly after to dine with him, and kisses him in greeting. 

She has missed this affection more than the other, these kisses more than the hunger, and feels almost sick with relief to have them returned to her, even if it is only for a few days, before they find something else to fight about. 

 

* * *

“I never wanted him, my lady.”

Elizabeth Rivers has returned, without Cecily, and Anne wonders why. She has quite openly favoured Cecily, who has much of her namesake’s sharp wit - the Dowager Duchess come again, complete with those too-knowing eyes that frightened Anne when she was a little girl.

“The King, I mean,” the girl says. “Uncle Richard. I never wanted anything from him but what stories he had of my father.”

“And advancement, for yourself and your sisters,” Anne says without looking away from her hoop - it annoys her, how lovely Elizabeth’s face is, and she is ashamed of being annoyed, because the girl cannot help it. After all, she had the best-looking parents in England, didn’t she?

“He never wanted me, either,” Elizabeth goes on, ignoring Anne’s pointed words - just as her mother would, and Anne is amused by that, for some reason.

“I know that now,” Anne says. “The King and I have been wed for many years now, Mistress Rivers - had I not been distracted with the loss of our son, I would have been able to think clearly enough to see his innocence.”

The mention of Edward is cruel, perhaps, but it is true. She was so lost in her grief, so busy blaming Richard because she had to blame  _ someone _ , that she had lost sight of all that she knew of him, all that she still knows.

She has not told him any of this, not yet, but she will. She knows that she can, now, after so many months of withholding her trust from him.

 

* * *

His hands settle on her hips without thought, and she turns to look him in the eye, over her shoulder.

“You feel better,” he says, a brush of a kiss and a smile. “More yourself.”

It is a year since Edward’s death. It does not feel real, somehow, that their boy could be a year gone, but it is, and they have spent the morning at mass, remembering him and praying for his peace.

Somehow, praying for Edward’s peace has given Anne some of her own.

“I think losing him drove me mad,” she admits, turning in Richard’s arms to curl against his chest - she has not done this in so long, unless after one of their frequent rows. “He was my boy, Richard. My only boy.”

Izzie used worry that she had not given George another son, but at least she gave him another  _ child _ \- Anne has only ever had Edward, and poor stillborn Cecily, and she never wanted anything more than she wanted to give Richard as many children as he wished, children enough to fill Middleham to overflowing.

“I should have been better,” Richard says, right arm strong and left heavy around her. “I should have seen that you needed me more. I am sorry. I am sorry for all that has happened since- since I became Lord Protector.”

His voice has never fully recovered from the delirium after the last battle, still running rough sometimes, but Anne has learned all its shifts and tones as well as she ever knew it, and hears the grief as bottomless as her own in it now.

“His illness was not your fault,” she says, and is surprised by how much she means it - she has blamed him at least a little all this time, she knows that and is ashamed of it, and wonders if it is for her to absolve some of his undeserved guilt. “No more than Buckingham’s faithlessness - God acts in mysterious ways. Terrible, sometimes, but not for us to understand.”

“I wish not so much to understand,” he says, pressing his face to her gathered-up hair and breathing deep, “as I wish it were not so.”

Some strain between them eases, and Anne sinks against his warmth as she has not in a year, lets him hold her as tight as he might wish and then, when they are both calm and their unannounced tears have stopped, she lets him kiss her, and it feels as it should, not as it recently has.

 

* * *

With spring comes Richard’s Parliament, held first in London and later, in the autumn, in York. 

London floods with nobles from all over the country, and they bring with them their wives, and their sons and daughters - the children are easier to bear than the wives, who seem to be handsomer women than Anne to a one, and more stylish besides. 

Anna Lovell comes too, though, and Agnes Ratcliffe and Mags Catesby, and blessed Maud Percy, and Anne is comforted by having these women she can trust near her - women who will not try to push her into Richard’s bed, as his sisters do.

“I have missed you,” she tells Anna, holding her close for a moment when she steps out of the carriage emblazoned with the Lovell wolf. “Come, come, so much has changed.”

And much has changed - court has come to life, now that she and Richard have come out of mourning, now that she and Richard have come together again, and it is no less lovely than it was under Edward and Elizabeth, if a little less opulent. There is music, and dancing, and laughter, and none of it makes Anne want to scream.

“You look so much better than Francis said you would,” Anna says, frank as ever, and Anne laughs helplessly, because she has missed having her friends near as much as she has missed Richard.

 

* * *

She goes to his bed that night, giddy with laughter and wine, and finds him still up, reading some letter or other.

“Anne,” he says, setting it aside and moving to get up. “Is something the matter?”

She pushes him flat down on the bed, climbs atop him, sheds her robe and nightgown, and presses his hands to her skin.

“Not now,” she assures him, and leans down to kiss him quiet.


	5. Richard

His left arm is still numb most of the time, so he makes sure to keep Anne always on his right.

There are more people at court than he would like, and he will be leaving many of them behind when they depart on the morrow - but he does not care. He has Anne, truly has her back, and they are going home.

It has been too long since they were in the North.

Anne has a new gown in a marvellous shade of deep blue, to match her diadem, and she looks so lovely that he does not know how he is to survive all the way to their first port of call without calling a halt so he can drag her away from their attendants and ravish her.

She would be mortified if he did such a thing, he knows, so he will not, but he  _ wants _ to.

She has recovered much of her health, and with it the pink of her cheeks and the softness of her hips. She still tires more easily, still has aches in her chest, but she is well, and so are they.

More or less. They will never be what they were - he will never risk her doubt again, and she will never recover from having doubted him - but they can be something else, something new. Something better, even. Who knows?

Her mantle is dove grey, a pale foil for her pale hair, and lovely. He aches to hold her, but smiles instead, and nudges his horse closer so he can take her hand and kiss her gloved fingers.

“We will have time to visit Middleham,” he says quietly, “if you wish it, my lady.”

Anne’s younger ladies flutter and twitter among themselves whenever he is affectionate to her, and it embarrasses him - he loves his wife, and does not care who knows it, but he wishes all the same that they did not fuss so over it.

“I would like that very much,” she says, reaching up to brush his hair back. “Send word for them to air out the house, my lord. Tell them we are coming home.”

 

* * *

 

The Duke of Buckingham is a child, but his mother is a Rivers.

Anne is the model of decorum, holding out a hand to little Lord Edward Stafford and to his mother alike, not startling as Richard would have when Lady Catherine kisses her cheek instead of her hand.

Catherine Woodville has more sense than to try and kiss Richard’s cheek. She offers him a curtsy and no more, and then steps aside, gesturing for them to enter with her head bowed.

Richard is glad of it - he had worried that she might snub Anne, or him, or somehow both of them together, but this is an appropriate welcome, and a friendly one at that. It is more than he might have hoped for, given all that has passed between him and both her families, birth and marital.

Lady Catherine - not Lady Buckingham, she somehow does not fit the title as her son fits his - has arranged a grand feast for their first night at (Stafford Hall).

“A thanks,” she says, “for restoring to my son all his rightful titles.”

Anne’s hand goes tight on Richard’s arm, but her smile never falters. He wonders if she learned that iron-tight control from her father, or from Margaret of Anjou - either seems likely.

“Your husband was misled, and wrongheaded,” Anne says coolly, still smiling. “But your son can do better.”

Little Buckingham’s chest swells, and to Richard’s surprise, Lady Catherine’s smile does not shift. He hopes that that bodes well.

Little Buckingham seems very taken with the Edmunds, Edmund Howard in particular, and that  _ does _ bode well - Edmund may never be Duke of Norfolk, but he might still wield influence, still hold sway with his older brother.

Richard did just that, after all, with Ned.

So it is good that Edward Stafford should be friends with Edmund Howard, and Richard encourages it, sending Edmund away and letting Edmund de la Pole serve him alone, or with his grooms.

“A feast tonight and a masque tomorrow,” Anne says, while they are preparing for dinner - she has a lovely gown of purple velvet, bright against his black, and pearls for her neck, pearls in her hair, a long string of pearls that hangs teasingly below the neckline of her gown-

“You’re staring,” she admonishes him, but he knows she doesn’t really mind. “Lady Catherine says that she has all things prepared for it - masks for us all, even.”

“I suppose it might be amusing,” he admits, already once more following the trail of those damnable pearls over her collarbones and down-

“We shall make the most of it, even if it is not,” she says, standing so suddenly that he is left staring directly down her gown, much to her obvious amusement. “Come, my lord, we must let the House of Stafford feast us - they might rise up against us if we don’t.”

 

* * *

Progress passes in a rush, a blur - he tires more easily than he would like, the travelling wearing on him as it never used, and so he staggers from meeting to feast and feast to hearing without questioning any of it. John de la Pole has command of his household, Francis Lovell of his itinerary, Hal Percy of… Something else. Anne will know what it all is, if he thinks to ask.

Gloucester roars, when he rides through the gates - Richard has never spent much time in the city whose name he has borne for most of his life, but it is his, and he belongs to it, and its people welcome him as a prodigal son finally returneth.

Anne garners another roar, when she follows him, sitting astride her fine grey mare with her shoulders back and her smile shy. She waves and they cheer, and Richard is so proud he could join them, if dignity did not prevent such a thing.

The only things that stand out in perfect, razor-sharp clarity, other than their arrival in Gloucester, are the moments he snatches with Anne - sneaking her away from the dancing at the feast thrown for them by the Staffords to kiss her behind the hangings, like youths playing at romance, or riding out just the two of them, before dawn, and watching the sun rise over Gloucester. Her hand is in his as often as he can manage, her skinny arm warm against his own, and he feels overwhelmed with blessings, that even if they have lost Edward, they have one another.

“We are going to be  _ late _ ,” she tells him on the morning they are due to depart Gloucester for Hereford, but he cannot stop himself - he had been drunk as a monk the night before, hardly able to do more than kiss her before he was snoring into the too-soft pillows, but he is awake and without any apparent ill-effects of his indulgence, so he is seeking to indulge in other ways, now.

Her breasts are so lovely in his hands, warm and soft and small, smaller than she likes but a perfect fit, really, for his fingers.

“I don’t care,” he tells her, trailing his nose up the thrumming line of her pulse from collar to chin, and then lifting his head so he can kiss her hard and deep. “I care only for you, now.”

They are late - terribly late,  _ embarrassingly _ so - but he does not care, because Anne is smiling despite the embarrassment.

 

* * *

There is a celebration for the anniversary of his victory at Bosworth, while they are travelling, and Richard smiles and makes the appropriate noises, but he remembers nothing at all of the battle.

Well, he remembers snatches - the Lancaster banner in the gloom, the lightning-flash pain of the morningstar crushing his armour into his shoulder, but beyond that?

Nothing. Nothing at all. It is not truly his victory to celebrate.

 

* * *

Middleham appears before them so suddenly that they are each taken aback by it, and Anne smothers a sob behind her hand.

He hears it, though, and reaches for her. Can it really be that they have not seen their home since last they were happy?

“Welcome to Middleham,” he calls, unsure of who will hear him, and uncaring. To Anne alone, he says “Welcome home, love,” and they ride side-by-side under the portcullised gate.

They are brought to their rooms immediately, and the servants have not forgotten their habits - two baths are drawn in Anne’s rooms, set side by side, and then left for them. They can call for help later, if Anne needs her hair rinsed, but otherwise they are alone.

They have been travelling for the better part of the year - they will spend Christmas in York, and then return to London by way of Cambridge, where they will visit their colleges. 

He knows this. He does not care about any of this.

Anne sits in front of her dressing table so he can unpin her hair - his left hand is still clumsier than it was, but she does not seem to mind. She combs through each tumbling length as it falls, and by the time he is done, her hair is shining soft over her shoulders, and her earrings catch the light through its curtain.

“Do you need help?” she asks, hands on his doublet, and he nods in thanks. His shoulder is aching, and she is gentler with him than his grooms.

His doublet hits the floor, and then his shirt. Her dress follows soon after, and her shift is pale blue.

“Please,” is all he can manage, but she understands. She leads him to the bed by the hand, crosses the mattress on her knees and then sits, turns to face him, knees bent up and eyes turned down.

He follows her, easy as a sigh, and wonders if the maids will mind when the sheets are filthy - they are both still wearing their boots, and he hasn’t the patience to wait and take them off.

“It has been so long,” he says, nuzzling under her chin as he has a thousand times since they left London - but this is not the same. This is  _ home,  _ him in Anne’s bed and sunlight slanting through the three tall windows on the south-facing wall, and it is safe, warm and secure and just theirs.

They have never shared Middleham with so many people before, and it feels a terrible intrusion to have so many guests. At least this, here, is still theirs alone.

She sinks back into the mattress when his teeth catch on the point of her collarbone, easing into this as if they have never been away, and he sets his clumsy left hand on her lovely thigh so he can rest his weight on the right.

“On your side, love,” she says, legs wrapping tight around his hips and throwing him to the left, so his useless arm is trapped beneath him and the good is free to touch her. She keeps one leg over his hip, and he starts there, running his hand from her knee to the crease of her backside and back, over and over, as she slips bony arms around his neck and draws him in for another kiss, and another, and another.

She presses closer when he lets his fingers dip around, to curl so they catch the smooth spread of her inner thigh, and makes a soft little sound against his tongue that makes him shiver.

Her hand is quick and sure as it slides down his chest, and he bites down on her lip without meaning to - she doesn’t seem to mind, laughing into his mouth before kissing him again, and then she is unlacing his breeches and he is oblivious to everything else but that quick, sure hand of hers.

“We shall go to Pontefract, too,” he whispers when she pulls away, one hand on his cock and the other his shoulder, pushing him onto his back. “We had happy times there, too, did we not?”

“We have had happy times everywhere we have lived, save for London,” Anne murmurs between lingering kisses to his neck, to his chest. “But we married in London, so I cannot fault it overmuch.”

Her hair tickles where it spills over his belly, and it is his turn to laugh then.

“You do not owe me more penance, Richard,” Anne says, nipping at the rise of his hipbone. “You do not need to try and recover our past happiness. Let us make new happiness instead, my lord. Let us find happiness in one another, as we used.”

He hardly lasts a minute, with her mouth on him, and she laughs again, gathering up his discarded shirt and using it to clean him up. She moves with an easy grace that has been absent these past months, and when she stands against the window he can see the shape of her through her shift.

She looks  _ well. _ She looks  _ healthy. _

He recovers quicker than he has since they were newly married, and lies atop her for the first time since Bosworth. She wraps her arms and legs so tightly around him that he thinks she will never release him, and cries out his name as she peaks - and oh, how beautiful she is, sharp-voiced and pink-cheeked and clinging to him.

He barely outlasts her, overwhelmed by how exquisite she feels, and hides his face against her neck. He shakes, as the pleasure fades, but she is shaking too, so he does not mind.

 

* * *

Feasting at Middleham is different, because they are hosts here, not guests.

All Anne’s favourite sweets have been prepared, and there are sharp cheeses and soft breads, and they are sitting at the high table, and it is all so familiar.

Edward’s loss seems sharper than ever, because here, at Middleham, his absence is so much more obvious.

“You’ve noticed as well?” Anne asks, searching out his hand below the table.

“It is unbearable,” Richard says, watching Teddy and Maggie chase after the Edmunds, Pole and Howard, and feeling hollowed out because Edward ought to be with them, too.

What joy is there in a home robbed of its family? He imagines Pontefract will be just as bad, and Barnard the same, were they to visit.

“York,” he says, “and Cambridge, and London.”

Anne nods her agreement, hand tight in his, and he hopes that none of their guests notice how quiet they have become.


	6. Anne

There is a moment of perfect stillness, as they ride through the gates of York.

Then Richard raises their clasped hands, and the stillness explodes. 

Anne’s horse shies a little, bringing her closer to Richard, and he responds by bringing her hand to his mouth, kissing her wedding ring and each of her knuckles.

Another round of cheers echoes around them, deafening and heartening, and Anne feels loved in a way she never has outside their bedchamber - these people love Richard as their King, love her as their Queen, and there is no doubt in them.

He is the last son of York, the man who cast down the last Lancastrian pretender. How could they  _ but  _ love him?

There is another moment of perfect stillness as the cheers fail, prompted by Richard’s fall from the saddle, slow and Lancaster red.

Anne’s hand is still in his when he hits the road, and remains there even as their guards converge and try to pull her away.

_ Not now,  _ she wants to scream,  _ not like this, not after all we have come through.  _

When she screams, there are no words. How can there be, when Richard is blank-eyed and bloodied below on the ground?

 

* * *

“A musket, madam,” Richard Ratcliffe says, and Anne presses her hand hard to her mouth - it is that, or begin to cry, and if she starts she will not stop. “The physicians have stopped the bleeding, but they are concerned.”

“He has lost so much blood, Annie,” Francis says, kneeling just to her left. “Will you come to him? He has been asking for you.”

“He- he is awake?” she asks, horrified - he must be in so much pain, and to be aware of it must be terrible. “I will come. I will- I will come. Bring me to him, Francis.”

They run, as best she can in her cumbersome skirts, and push through the door into Richard’s bedchamber just as he howls in pain. The room reeks of blood and burning flesh, but there is no smell of rot, as there was when last Anne came to him like this.

It is the same shoulder. The left, the shoulder that bore the pain of his bent spine, that bears all their pains now. Why has God decided to sour all their joy, to steal away all their happiness? His shoulder was recovered, and so were they, but now-

“Anne,” he calls, hoarse, desperate, reaching for her with his right hand even as Richard Ratcliffe and John Pole throw themselves over him again, to hold him down as his flesh sizzles once more under the cauterising irons. He screams her name, and she dives toward him, pushing John Pole’s legs out of the way so she can curl up on the pillow and draw Richard’s head into her lap. 

He is sobbing, when the searing stops, his good arm wrapped tight around her waist and his face buried in her skirts, and she is sobbing too, to see him like this.

“You must survive this,” she tells him, stroking his lovely hair and determinedly not looking at the ruin of his shoulder - oh, God be good, she can see the bone, a pale splintered mess amidst the red, red wreckage. “You must be strong, and survive this for me. You  _ must. _ ”

He is shivering all over now, shock turning him pale and clammy under her hands, and she cannot stand it - he is not allowed to die before her. She will not permit it.

“He will live,” she says to the physicians, rubbing her hands firm over his chest, to try and quell the shivering, “or you will die.”

She will hold to that promise - after all, she is nothing if not her father’s daughter.

 

* * *

Richard wakes late in the night, so late that she can see the dawn creeping up beyond the city. 

“Water,” he croaks, and she helps him sip a little water, and then a little wine. “I thought I had imagined you.”

“Now, or earlier?”

He shrugs his right shoulder, the left unmoving - should she worry over that? Is it better that it stays still and spares him the pain, or that it hurts him, but functions?

“Both,” he says. “I don’t know. I thought I would die.”

“You may yet,” she says, settling hip to hip, her over the blankets and him under. “I thought you were dead before you hit the ground.”

He had been so pale, even for him. He is so pale now, paler than she has ever seen him save when he was brought home from Bosworth, and she is terrified. 

What if he dies? He cannot be allowed to die. She could not bear it.

“Come lie with me,” he says, patting the bed on his right - and of course she must, so she slips off the heavy woollen robe someone wrapped her in and climbs under the covers to curl against him. His skin is still clammy, cold and hot and damp with sweat, but his heart is steady under her hand, and his breathing strained, but even.

“Please don’t leave me again,” she whispers, surprised by her tears even though it seems as though they have been falling for some time. “Please, Richard, I could not bear to lose you again.”

His strong right arm is weak around her shoulders, and she is so afraid. 

 

* * *

The whole city is hunting for the would-be murderer, and Anne wishes she could help them. She wishes she was stronger, fiercer, that she could march through the city as Margaret of Anjou would have, that she could find the  _ bastard _ and tear his heart out with her own hands. 

Is she to lose everything dear to her? It feels as though it must be so, she thinks, as she watches Richard toss and turn in a fever - a milder one than what took him after Bosworth, but he is weaker now than he was then, frailer and weaker and  _ delicate. _

Her rosary was her father’s, once, a heavy thing of black ebony beads and silver links, and she almost fears that it will break apart under the weight of her prayers. 

“You cannot die,” she tells him, taking his unmoving left hand and wrapping the heavy beads through his fingers. “I forbid you to die, Richard of Gloucester, do you hear me? I  _ forbid _ it.”

He mutters something - Edward’s name, she thinks, but his brother or their son, she cannot be sure - and then turns away from her, and she weeps. 

 

* * *

Anne holds court in his place, a rosary that was Izzie’s wound tight through her fingers. It is pretty and dainty, beads of amethyst and links of gold, and she can see people looking at how it never stills in her hands.

She does not care. She is Richard’s wife, and she must pray twice as hard as everyone else does for his recovery.

She is speaking with Thom Howard and Hal Percy about some dispute between the Earl of somewhere and Baron something-or-other when Francis comes in, dusty and worn and bloody-lipped, but triumphant.

“You have found him,” she says, upright without any thought to stand. “I want to see him.”

“He has given up the names of his conspirators without even being asked, my lady,” Francis says, taking the knee before her. “He says that had you not come closer to the King, the King would be dead, madam. He seems to think that you saved his life.”

Had her horse not shied at the noise - had the people not shown such love - Richard would be dead. Oh,  _ God. _

“Would you rather arrest them now, so they can all be executed together, or execute him immediately, Your Grace?”

Anne doesn’t even care for the man’s name, only for the names of those who paid him.

“Bring them to me,” she says. “I will see them all dead.”

 

* * *

Talbot, de Vere, Welsh names of no account - Richard pardoned them in the days following Bosworth, and they repay him with  _ this. _

Well, Anne will repay their disloyalty with blood, and attainders, and no mercy.

How  _ dare _ they. How  _ dare _ they!

 

* * *

Richard’s fever breaks not an hour after Anne signs the warrants for their executions.

“You have been acting in my name, I see,” he says, foggy-edged and starry-eyed. “You were not hurt?”

“No, love,” Anne says, and it is laughter and a sob both. “No, only afraid.”

She stays with him, leaves John Pole to witness the executions in their names, and goes out into court again that evening, to reassure their courtiers that the King is well, that he is recovering, that he is  _ alive. _

 

* * *

Christmas Day comes in a storm of hail and howling winds, but Anne does not mind. She wakes that morning curled against Richard’s side, him snoring louder even than the gale battering the windows and his cheeks flushed for the first time in weeks.

Three weeks, he’s been abed, pale as bone and stupefied on wine to cope with the pain. Anne has been working with John Pole to arrange for his continuing convalescence - court will move to York for the foreseeable future, it has been decided - and spending as much time as she can by his side.

Not enough time, apparently, if he could have managed this.

“It was Annie,” he admits, and Anne wishes his sisters would go away a little. They are always present, the Duchesses of Exeter and Suffolk, and while Anne loves Annie and Bess both, she loves them best when they are far away. “I told her what I wanted, and she sought it out for me - she has taste closer to yours than Bess.”

It is a necklace to match the coronet he had made for her last year, and dainty pearl earrings with lovely silver clasps. There is a ring, too, a sapphire polished smooth and round as a robin’s egg, set in gold, and small enough that it does not dwarf her hand.

“My gifts seem paltry in comparison,” she says, a little embarrassed. She has a clock for him, because he loves mechanical things, and shirts and new doublets, and a ring -  just the one piece of jewellery, plain and simple, a gold band and a polished emerald so dark it looks almost black, made to fit his smallest finger. 

She has a new nightgown, too, but that will be kept aside until he is well enough to truly appreciate such things.

“Your gifts are perfect,” he tells her, and means it so much that she can see it on his face, in his lovely dark eyes. “Anne…”

She kisses him very carefully, because she is still afraid of hurting him, and is outright mortified by the sound she makes when he catches her lower lip between his teeth as she draws away.

“Later,” he promises her, and she wonders if perhaps she has underestimated his recovery.

When he arrives in the throne room, supported by John Pole and wan above his new dark green doublet, she knows she has underestimated him - and when he smiles at her, shy and knowing, she knows that she will have to bring out that new nightgown to equal this gift from him to her.

“I could not allow you to hold court on Christmas Day on your own,” he says, kissing her cheek as he sinks into his chair. “Let us see how honoured we are by our subjects, shall we?”

 

* * *

“We will stay here until Candlemas,” he announces on the first day he is well enough to hold court alone, on the feast of the Epiphany. “And from here, we will travel to Cambridge.”

There are murmurs at this - doubtless the city wishes to host them longer, to keep them well as repayment for hurts suffered within their walls, but Anne knows that Richard wishes only to go home, to settle into his own bed and have his own things about him. 

He was always the same, when they were away from Middleham for long. Strange to think that London, despite them both thinking of it with dislike, has become home. 


End file.
